Won 2 tickets from a local radio station for the Major League Baseball All Star Fan Festival. I am not a big baseball fan, but free is free:) Besides, given the face value of the Festival ticket, I don't think I can make a killing on Craigslist:(The event is held in Mascone Center in San Francisco. By the time we reach the city, there was a fairly long line waiting to get in. Luckily for us, the line moved fairly quickly. Good job of crowd control:)
The fan festival occupied all 3 levels of Mascone Center. The first floor was mainly exhibitions on historical baseball figures, leagues from the past and the likes. I am not familiar with baseball history, so it was not too interesting to me. My friend A is more into baseball, so he enjoyed himself more.
The second floor has what I think is the highlight of the show: pitching cave and batting cage. The pitching cave is pretty cool. We were given 4 balls, and could choose the hitter we want to face. Then an image of the hitter is shown on screen, in his swinging motion, complete with catcher and empire. We threw towards the image and the computer determine if it is a ball or strike, or if the hitter hit it out of the park:) The computer will also display speed of the ball after each pitch.
I chose to pitch against A-Rod, because he is the only hitter that came to mind. My first ball hit off the cross bar on top of the cage:( Guess that's what you call a wild pitch! My other pitches were therefore more control and slower. According to the computer, my fastest pitch was 75mph. Personally, I have some doubt, but, I am not going to complain. I threw 4 balls and A-Rod walked. A went against Barry. He has a pretty good pitch, but on his sole thrown strike, Barry hit it out of the park. I wonder who did better:)
There are 2 batting cage. The first one is quite cool. Again, a life size MLB pitcher's image is projected on a screen. The image would go through its pitching action and then a out of a small opening on the screen where his hand was, a ball would come flying toward the batter. Very realistic, though I am sure the ball is not quite at the speed of a MLB pitcher. There was a long line for that batting cage, so we went to the more traditional one.
We chose a traditional batting cage, pitching about 30-40mph balls. I went 0-10:( Quite frustrated, even though baseball is not my sport. BTW, if anyone knows of a batting cage in the Bay area, please let me know. I like to work on my swing. A did better, going 4-10.
There was a small, straight race track on the second floor for people to sprint and compete speed. We did not participate in that event.
On the third floor is a large, almost life size field where some of the legends of the game was suppose to give lessons. When we went, the event had just concluded, so we did not see any action. There was also an area for fielding fly ball. Given the line, we decide to skip. One more traditional batting cage, which, given my previous failure, did not want to participate in:)
Dotted around the major exhibits are photo booths where one can don baseball uniforms of present and yester-years. Also background where one can be seen shagging fly balls, or cut outs where one can adopt the body of famous baseball players. There are also many stores selling sports memorabilia, baseball cards, uniforms, caps, posters etc.
There was also a few live broadcasting booth where there was audience participation. Audience were invited to ask question and get free t-shirt in return. Also Will Clark made a guest appearance. A was quite excited and took several picture of Clark:)
We spent a total of about 5 hours in Mascone center. As usual, we had dinner with S who stays in the city. Dinner is at Golden Era Vegetarian Restaurant. Not quite the traditional Chinese vegetarian restaurant since this restaurant does use garlic and onion in their dishes! We ordered pot stickers, drumsticks, spinach tofu soup, caramelized chicken and lemon grass tofu. See my review at Yelp! for details.
Had a fairly good time with the exception of being disappointed at going 0-10 in the batting cage.
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